430: ‘Ersatz PopSocket’, With Andru Edwards

Andru Edwards, welcome to the show. You texted me from Google's Made by Google event and said, this is so weird. What happened? Is this a generational influencer-versus-press divide? I try to be friendly, but clapping at a press event feels unprofessional. Also, was the audience all media, or did Google stack the room with their own people?

It was staged like a TV taping: giant studio cameras, a warm-up comic, applause signs—we were basically part of the show. Younger influencer types seemed fine with it; old-school press like me were there to work. At Apple I'm typing nonstop—the applause you hear is usually Apple employees. The room felt small, maybe two-thirds Steve Jobs Theater. And they never told us it would be like this. Stranger still, the embargo lifted an hour before showtime, so my video on what they were announcing went up before they took the stage. Apple would never.

That mismatch between being there and watching at home has gotten stark—the Vision Pro one-more-thing moment live felt electric, but the video was silent. Anyway, onto the products. You told me Pixel 10 is shipping the just-do-it context features Apple promised. What else can it actually do on-screen?

Magic Q is proactive. If you text me about your mom’s flight, it suggests a reply with the time and flight info already filled in. If someone says, call the airline, it surfaces the airline number and your flight details, and puts you a tap from the call. It can see what’s on your screen, and it can see the world—point the camera down a supermarket aisle and ask for the low-sodium beans, and it guides you to the right shelf. That feels like helpful, low-friction AI.

Right—superhuman in the useful ways, like spreadsheets were. It is very Tony Stark: augment me, do the tedious hunting, and let me tap to act. If you only use Apple gear, you are missing some of this already-real stuff. Pixel feels ahead here.

Non‑AI, Google leaned into hardware too. Pixel Snap is basically Qi two MagSafe—thanks to Apple making it a standard—so day one you get the entire MagSafe accessory ecosystem. Cameras: the base Pixel now gets a telephoto up to twenty times, which makes the Pro less necessary for many. The Pro goes to one hundred times and uses AI to clean up the mushy pixels, but refuses to enhance faces to avoid stalking. I see the good and the risk—what’s your take?

Philosophically, Google pushes further with generation; Apple stays more conservative. Even Apple’s magic eraser focuses on background distractions, whereas Samsung will rebuild a face. It is a gradient, not binary. I align with Apple’s caution: mostly stick to the photons that hit the sensor, because trust in photos and videos is already under pressure. Stuff like automagic family composites—I get why people love them—but I’m uneasy with that being built into the default camera; it blurs the line between a captured moment and a created one.

To me, the neat middle ground is camera coaching. Pixel will suggest poses and angles live—turn a little, frame them with that plant—so you shoot something more interesting without fabricating the scene after the fact.

Speaking of philosophies: Mark Levoy left Pixel for Adobe and shipped Project Indigo on iOS. It embraces waiting a few seconds to compute a more natural, film-like result. Apple’s bias is immediacy—show it live, show it instantly. Shoot RAW on iPhone and you see how much computation phone photos need; the tiny sensors are noisy even in daylight. Early Pixels used extra computation to overcome inferior hardware and still looked great. Adobe, with no skin in hardware, is an interesting third path.

Exactly—back then Google had to wait a beat because silicon wasn’t there. Now you can do portrait and night stuff live, while Levoy still chases the best image even if it takes time. Different goals. On foldables: Pixel 10 Pro Fold adds a dust rating—a big deal—and a new hinge. The hardware’s impressive, but I’m iOS-first. I want Apple’s foldable. In the meantime, I like Google defining system-level foldable behaviors so other Android makers do not have to hack it.

That platform role matters—define windows, gestures, continuity the way iPadOS finally did with proper multitasking. Market-wise, foldables are about one point two percent in the U.S. Apple entering would legitimize the category and lift all boats—like iPhone did for Android. If Apple debuts a two-thousand-dollar foldable, the press will melt down, even though that is already the going rate.

Samsung told us last year only about three percent of people had even tried a foldable after half a decade. The clamshell flips outsell the book style on price; Motorola actually leads flips in the U.S. I see flips as fashion-forward, whereas book style changes how you work. If Apple’s first foldable ships, I expect it to be more like a non‑Pro: two rear cameras, some missing Pro features, same two-thousand-dollar tier as rivals—and lots of outrage about paying the same for less on paper.

Apple will insist on durability—no visible crease, real dust and water resistance—and that costs money. On this iPhone cycle, I am reading the event logo tea leaves: dark blue and, finally, orange on a Pro. Pro colors have been boring for years; an anodized orange could be a hit. And the long-rumored iPhone Air? My bet is it lands between the base and Pro on price, is thinner with two cameras and shorter battery life, and aims for that just-right feel. Do you think they use the Air name, and where does it land spec-wise?

I think Air replaces Plus at the Plus price, tariffs notwithstanding. Spec-wise, I expect a Pro-class chip with one GPU core disabled so it slots between 17 and 17 Pro. That also fits the rumor that next year the Pro and fold ship in September, and the regular 18 and 18 E slide to spring—chip tiers become the big separator.

This thin iPhone is going to be the cool, different one—the accessory phone. Samsung’s super-thin Edge came and went, but Apple will claim thinnest. And honestly, color drives demand; my quick color videos hit a million views. I think it’ll be wildly popular because it looks new, even though it’s not for me—one camera and likely weaker battery life are deal breakers.

I loved how the 16e feels—plain, matte aluminum, almost no camera bump so it lays flat, and for most people a great one times camera is enough. I still want ultra-wide and telephoto, but I’d recommend it to family. The mini failed because people buy before they try; they think they need big. A thin Air with mid-size screen solves that. Battery should be fine because Apple’s modem sips power by skipping bands almost nobody needs. Not Max-level life, but enough.

I saw a report saying battery life could be like iPhone twelve, and that Apple might bring back a battery case—kind of defeats the point of thin if you slap a bulging pack on it.

I’d rather they revive the MagSafe battery pack than a case. It sticks better, shows charge info, smartly hovers around seventy percent for longevity, and you can plug your phone’s USB-C in to charge the Lightning pack. It even works as an ersatz PopSocket. Also: bring back bumper cases. With iPhone 4’s Antennagate they gave bumpers away; I even asked Jobs on stage if execs used cases—they all pulled out bare phones. Bumpers protect the rails and show the color. Do that for Air and Pro.

New accessory leak: a magnetic cross‑body strap in matching colors. Would you wear your phone like that? I wouldn’t. On naming—iPhone Air fits Apple’s pattern, and that sky blue screams Air. If I’m right, you should at least go dark blue this year.

I’ll probably end up with black unless orange is a banger. My wife loves orange and will go orange if it’s good—we need different colors in the house. On naming, Air makes sense. Air used to mean thinnest; now it means mid‑tier, but it is uniquely Apple while everyone else uses Pro, Plus, Max. If it is not Air, it will be an all‑new name.

What about the foldable—does it get iPhone in the name or become its own thing? The macOS twenty‑six window management feels like the right UI seed: fluid, resizable panes scaled down for touch. Foldables also need a half‑fold “laptop” mode—video up top, controls below, camera previews, that kind of thing.

iPadOS split from iOS mostly to ship on different cadences, but keeping them separate now is good. I cannot see free‑form, red‑yellow‑green window chrome coming to iPhone. iPadOS twenty‑six’s tiled windows are the best iPad multi‑app story yet. So the foldable iPhone likely stays iOS with unique split‑screen and half‑fold behaviors the slab phones do not have—not a new OS.

On rumors: every August the focus jumps to next year. It is the itch you cannot scratch. Bloomberg plays the stock‑move game—note the Apple up three percent paragraph minutes after publishing on terminals. The “reinvent iPhone over three years” storyline is partly just the inevitability of change, though this run does look more interesting than the twelve to fourteen stretch.

Three straight years with different form factors would be a first—no more S‑year holding patterns.

A foldable would be the first true reinvention since iPhone Ten’s gesture era. It will start small—maybe five percent of sales, then eight, then fourteen—until one day a third of iPhones are foldables and they drive the margins. People will call year one a flop and never revisit it. Apple Pay had the same arc. Apple is late but still early; in ten years we may all use them and laugh at how thick gen‑one was. All right, I’m going to call that a wrap. Andru, awesome to have you, and I will see you soon. Where can people find you?

I am at Andru—A N D R U—on YouTube, Instagram, and Threads. I write Circuit Breaker at andru dot beehiiv dot com—B E E H I I V dot com. And my Geared Up podcast is on YouTube at Geared Up.

Do you thank your parents for the spelling that gets you the Andru handle? It is short, unique, and memorable without extra letters. Find Andru at A N D R U, read Circuit Breaker on Beehiiv, and watch Geared Up on YouTube. Thanks, Andru—see you soon.